Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.

a story about my hands

I don’t normally write product reviews on my blog–this isn’t that kind of blog (though, in fairness, it is hard to say exactly what kind of blog this is). But I recently came across a product that has so astonished me and enriched my life that I feel it would be wrong of me to keep it to myself. However, in keeping with the literary nature of this blog, I will tell you about it in the form of a story.

Once there was a woman whose daily labor was almost entirely intellectual. She got occasional opportunities for salutary manual labor, as when she had to replace a heating element in her oven or shovel the snow out of her driveway. But most of her work consisted of teaching, typing, and thinking deep thoughts (well, some days she got to do that third thing). Therefore, one might have expected her hands to be soft and smooth, the kind of hands that an upper-class woman in a Victorian novel would be proud of.

However, for at least six months out of the year, her hands were as red, rough, and raw as those of one of those slipshod, loud-voiced women (fishwives or washerwomen, they usually are) who live in the seedy and morally questionable tenements of a Dickens novel. She never knew exactly what caused this–poor circulation, possibly–but no matter what she tried, her hands cracked, stung, and bled. She tried all the hand creams, from the aesthetically pleasing but largely useless Bath and Body Works kinds to the evil-smelling medicated kinds that surely were too nasty not to work. She went to bed with her hands coated in Vaseline, wearing handbell gloves to keep it from getting on the sheets, and although she found some temporary relief here, in a few hours after waking up she was back to looking like a bloody-knuckled butcher. She wore gloves every time she ventured outside from November through March, which probably did prevent her from losing any fingers due to frostbite, but it’s quite possible that the wool or synthetic material of the gloves actually exacerbated the persistent problem. Unfortunately, she also had a habit of wearing “statement” rings, bracelets, and other jewelry that drew attention to her back-alley prizefighter paws.

Then, she learned of a product called O’Keefe’s Working Hands. (To be precise, if this didn’t ruin the timeless quality of the story, I would tell you that her mother came across the product while searching for severely dry hand remedies on her smartphone.) This odorless, non-residue-leaving, waxy paste comes in a shallow green tub and is said to be able to heal serious cracks and callouses in the hands of people who actually do manual labor for a living. So of course, my hands (for this story is, indeed, about me) were no match for it. I have been using O’Keefe’s since late December, and my hands are smooth, soft, and possibly even attractive. I still occasionally use a more standard hand cream, just for good measure, and I wear my handsome gray driving gloves when I go outside. But it’s the O’Keefe’s that makes the real difference. The truly amazing thing is that I don’t even put it on every day–only when I happen to glance down at that lovely green container on my nightstand and think, “Oh, maybe I should put some of that on.”

The moral we can draw from this story: If you have dry, cracked hands and have never found a satisfactory remedy, try O’Keefe’s Working Hands. I’ve seen it at Walmart and Food Lion, so I’m guessing any standard grocery or drug store will carry it. It can also be ordered online.